Well 2020 sure was a doozy! The pandemic really gave the world a whole new set of challenges we haven’t ever had to deal with before. Changes in everyday function at work, at home and at school. We all had to shift and allow ourselves to think indifferent ways and to accommodate this new way of living and thinking. It truly put us all in a state of imbalance. Though I would never wish what has happened this past year upon the world, sometimes a state of imbalance causes us to see everything from a different perspective and be more creative in our thinking and in our vision.

When designing a space, many of us come to a crossroads where we have to decide between symmetry and asymmetry. I think our first inclination is to make sure everything is symmetrical. But let’s think about this in terms of life in general first.When we are in a state of “what we perceive to be” balance, we are content and we don’t feel the need to make any changes.However, I believe this is when we can become complacent and really stifle our natural ability to create.

So in our homes and offices, the challenge is to create some areas where we take away symmetry to create “balance”. Because in reality that’s what we want...balance...not necessarily symmetry. We want the negative space to allow an area to “breathe”.We need that in life, as well. To stay balanced and creative we need to breathe and sometimes that means allowing the“negative” to challenge us.

Here are some good examples of symmetry vs asymmetry.